---
name: decision-memo
description: "Structures a product or business choice into an evidence-backed decision memo with options, trade-offs, a recommendation, and next test. Use when a team is debating direction or needs to record why one option should be chosen."
---

# Write the decision memo

Apply this skill during **Discovery** work. It supports Any stack.

Turn a fuzzy debate into one explicit choice, its evidence, trade-offs, and next move.

## Instructions

Write a decision memo before proposing more work. State the single decision, owner, and decision date. Separate observed facts from interpretations and assumptions, citing the source and freshness of each fact. Compare two or three credible options, including doing nothing when it is real, across user value, commercial value, effort, risk, reversibility, and cost of delay. Recommend one option in plain language. End with the smallest next action that can produce missing evidence, its success threshold, and the condition that would change or stop the recommendation. Do not hide uncertainty behind confident prose.

## Detect the problem

- A document that describes context but never names the choice
- Assumptions written in the same voice as observed facts
- A recommendation with no next test or condition that could change it

## Hold the gate

Do not declare this phase complete until every item passes:

- [ ] One decision is stated as a choice, with an owner and a decision date
- [ ] Observed facts, interpretations, and assumptions are visibly separated
- [ ] Two or three credible options are compared, including doing nothing when relevant
- [ ] Trade-offs, risks, reversibility, and the cost of delay are explicit
- [ ] The recommendation ends with the next evidence-producing action and its stop condition

## Verify the result

Give the memo to someone outside the discussion; they must identify the choice, recommendation, strongest evidence, and next action without explanation.